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Goodnight-Loving Trail.Pdf GOODNIGHT-LOVING TRAIL. The Goodnight-Loving Trail ran from Young County, Texas, southwest to Horsehead Crossingqv on the Pecos River, up the Pecos to Fort Sumner, New Mexico, and on north to Colorado. In the spring and early summer of 1866 Charles Goodnight and Oliver Lovingqqv drove their first herd of longhorn cattleqv over the Butterfield Overland Mailqv route from near Fort Belknap via the Middle Concho River and Castle Gap,qv to Horsehead (on some old maps marked Dead Horse) Crossing. Leaving the former mail route there, they worked up the Pecos, crossing it from time to time as the terrain and watering places required. They drove a second herd, bought from John S. Chisum,qv from his Concho River range to Fort Sumner later that same summer. The northern extension of the Goodnight-Loving Trail was first blazed by Loving in the fall of 1866. Initially, it ran north from Fort Sumner up the Pecos to Las Vegas, then followed the Santa Fe Trailqv to Raton Pass and around the base of the Rockies via Trinidad and Pueblo to Denver, Colorado. Since that was a roundabout way, Goodnight in the fall of 1867 altered the route fifty or sixty miles to the east, crossing the Gallinas valley and the well-watered plains of northeastern New Mexico near Capulin Mountain before swinging back northwestward to Raton Pass. At Raton Pass "Uncle Dick" Wootton had established a toll station near the summit and charged Goodnight ten cents a head for passage. Goodnight complied, but not without protest. At the head of Apishapa Canyon, forty miles northeast of Trinidad, he set up a ranch and cattle-relay station. In the spring of 1868 Goodnight entered into a contract with John Wesley Iliff in which he agreed to deliver his cattle to Iliff at the Union Pacific Railroad town of Cheyenne, Wyoming. From the Arkansas valley near Pueblo, Goodnight and his men struck out due north, passing east of Denver, to the South Platte River. They crossed that stream at the site of present Greeley and followed a tributary, Crow Creek, to Cheyenne, where the delivery was made. Afterward, Goodnight and his men went back to New Mexico to buy more cattle from Chisum at Bosque Grande. Returning north, Goodnight further "straightened out" the trail by leaving the Pecos north of Fort Sumner and traveling north to Alamogordo Creek and across the plains via Cuervo Creek and its tributaries to a spot on the Canadian River twenty miles west of Fort Bascom. From there he proceeded to the Cimarron Seco west of Capulin Mountain. In order to avoid Dick Wootton's toll road, Goodnight opened a new, easier passageway through Tinchera Pass into Colorado. The Goodnight-Loving Trail was thus routed, and although Goodnight himself made only one more delivery at Cheyenne, many cattle concerns from Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado used all or portions of the trail extensively until the advent of railroads in the Southwest in the early 1880s. The trail was sometimes known simply as the Goodnight Trail. GOODNIGHT, CHARLES (1836-1929). Charles Goodnight, rancher, the fourth of five children of Charles and Charlotte (Collier) Goodnight, was born on March 5, 1836, on the family farm in Macoupin County, Illinois. His father died of pneumonia in 1841 when Charles was five, and shortly thereafter his mother married Hiram Daugherty, a neighboring farmer. In all, Charles had only six months of formal schooling. Late in 1845 he accompanied his family on the 800- mile trek south to a site in Milam County, Texas, near Nashville-on-the-Brazos, riding bareback on a white-faced mare named Blaze. He later took pride in the fact that he was born at the same time as the Republic of Texasqv and that he "joined" Texas the year it joined the Union. Growing up in the Brazos bottoms, the boy learned to hunt and track from an old Indian named Caddo Jake. At age eleven Charles began hiring out to neighboring farms, and at fifteen he rode as a jockey for a racing outfit at Port Sullivan. Not satisfied with that occupation, he returned to his widowed mother and younger siblings, continued at various farm and plantation jobs, including supervision of black slave crews, and for two years freighted with ox teams. In 1853 his mother married Rev. Adam Sheek, a Methodist preacher; that led to the formation of the partnership three years later between Charles and his step- brother, John Wesley Sheek. Although they considered going to California, they were dissuaded by Sheek's brother-in-law, Claiborne Varner, who induced them to run about 400 head of cattle on shares along the Brazos valley for a ten-year period. In 1857 the young partners trailed their herd up the Brazos to the Keechi valley in Palo Pinto County. At Black Springs they built a log cabin buttressed with stone chimneys, to which they brought their parents in 1858. Goodnight continued freighting cotton and provisions to Houston and back for a time until Wes Sheek married, then assumed the bulk of responsibility of looking after the growing herd of scrawny, wild Texas cattle. With his acquired hunting and trailing skills, he quickly mastered the modes of survival in the wilderness. During this time he became acquainted with Oliver Loving,qv who was also running cattle in the Western Cross Timbers. When the gold rush to Colorado began, Goodnight helped Loving send a herd through the Indian Territory and Kansas to the Rocky Mountain mining camps. As Indian troubles in Northwest Texas increased, concurrent with heated conflict over the reservations on the upper Brazos and Clear Fork, Goodnight and his neighbors joined forces with Capt. Jack (J. J.) Cureton'sqv rangers, with whom he served as a scout and guide. It was Goodnight who found the trail leading to Peta Nocona'sqv Comanche encampment on the Pease River in December 1860 and brought word of it back to Cureton and Capt. Lawrence Sullivan (Sul) Ross.qv He guided the rangers to the Indian camp and took part in the attack on December 18 in which Cynthia Ann Parkerqv was recaptured. With the outbreak of the Civil War,qv Cureton's rangers, including Goodnight, were attached to the Frontier Regiment.qv Goodnight spent most of the war chasing marauding Indians and border toughs while ranging from the Canadian to the Colorado and Brazos headwaters with the likes of James E. McCord, James B. (Buck) Barry,qqv and A. T. Obenchain. The intimate knowledge he gained of the vast rolling prairies and Llano Estacadoqv later proved useful. At the expiration of his term of service in 1864, Goodnight returned to Palo Pinto County, where he and other cowmen spent the next year trying to recoup their cattle business from the chaos that characterized the frontier during that era. He sought out a new range along Elm Creek, in Throckmorton County, where Indians ran off nearly 2,000 head of his cattle in September 1865. Since cattle markets in Texas were poor at that time, Goodnight looked for a higher price at the Indian agencies and army posts in New Mexico, where beef was in demand. In the spring of 1866 he and Loving organized a drive from Fort Belknap southwest to the Pecos River at Horsehead Crossingqv and up that stream to Fort Sumner, where they sold their steers to feed the Indians beef at eight cents a pound. Eighteen cowhands, including Bose Ikard, Robert Clay Allison,qv and "One-Armed" Bill Wilson, participated in the venture, for which Goodnight assembled and utilized the first chuckwagon. The route they laid off became known as the Goodnight-Loving Trail,qv later one of the Southwest's most heavily used cattle trails. At the end of their third trip to Fort Sumner in 1867, Loving died from wounds he received in a fight with Indians, but Goodnight continued to divide the trail earnings with his old partner's family in Weatherford and later had his body taken back there for burial. Throughout the late 1860s Goodnight contracted for delivery of herds on the Pecos, usually at Bosque Grande, below Fort Sumner. He also received herds from John S. Chisumqv and other Texas cowmen, drove thousands of cattle into Colorado and Wyoming, and sold them to such ranchers as John Wesley Iliff and the Thatcher brothers for the purpose of stocking northern ranges. Goodnight's herds were not immune from attacks by bandits and Indians, especially during the height of the illicit trade with Comancheros.qv In the winter of 1869 he established his Rock Canon Ranch on the Arkansas River five miles west of Pueblo, Colorado, and registered a PAT brand for his cattle. It was around that time that people started calling him "Colonel." On July 26, 1870, Goodnight married Molly Dyer, his longtime sweetheart, who had taught school at Weatherford (see GOODNIGHT, MARY ANN DYER). After the wedding at the home of relatives in Hickman, Kentucky, the newlyweds returned to the Rock Canon, which was their home for the next six years. Goodnight continued driving cattle and in 1871 worked with John Chisum to clear a profit of $17,000. In addition he farmed with irrigation,qv planted an apple orchard, and invested heavily in farmlands and city lots in Pueblo. Among other services he helped found the Stock Growers' Bank of Pueblo and was part owner of the opera house, a meat-packing facility at Las Animas, and other businesses in the area. Along with neighboring cattlemen such as Henry W. (Hank) Cresswellqv and the Thatchers, he formed Colorado's first stock raisers' association in November 1871 and in 1875 laid out the Goodnight Trail from Alamogordo Creek in New Mexico to Granada, Colorado.
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